Hollywood's Viper Room and New York's SPA nightclub
are a long way from the Maryland basement apartment in which
PETA began two decades ago, but they were the perfect venues
for “the world's most rock 'n' roll charity” (as Chrissie
Hynde calls PETA) to celebrate its 20th
anniversary.

Chrissie threw a private party on the
Sunset Strip, wowing her guests with songs she belted out
with her band, The Pretenders. Celebrity celebrants included
Dharma and Greg's Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson,
Bill Maher, Tobey Maguire, Mark McGrath, Shalom Harlow,
Morrissey, Pamela Anderson, Marcus Schenkenberg, and Alicia
Silverstone.

Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson

Shalom Halow

Sandra Bernhard

Morrissey

Montel Williams

Tobey Maguire

Todd Oldham

Mark Mcgrath

Pamela Anderson and Alicia Silverstone

PARTY MUSICPartygoers received a special CD invitation,
including songsby Sandra Bernhard, Prince, Nina Hagen and Lene
Lovich.

In 1980, PETA was founded with little more than a phone
and a fax machine. Two decades and 700,000 members later, PETA
has helped revolutionize the way the world views animals. Some
notable accomplishments:

1981PETA uncovers the abuse of the “Silver Spring monkeys,”
resulting in the first arrest and conviction of an animal
experimenter in the U.S. on charges of cruelty to
animals.

1992PETA releases undercover photographs and videotapes
showing ducks being violently force-fed on a foie gras “farm”
in New York, resulting in the first-ever police raid on a U.S.
factory farm.

1994A furrier is charged with cruelty, for the first time
ever, after a PETA investigator films him genitally
electrocuting chinchillas.

1996After PETA exposes the NASA Bion experiment, in which
straitjacketed monkeys were to be implanted with electrodes
and launched into space, the U.S. pulls out of the
project.

1998Taiwan passes its first-ever law against cruelty to
animals, after a PETA investigation reveals that dogs at
pounds are being starved, electrocuted, drowned and beaten to
death.

1999A North Carolina grand jury hands down the first-ever
felony cruelty indictments against pig-farm workers, caught on
videotape by a PETA investigator, beating pigs with metal bars
and skinning and dismembering one pig alive.

2000After a year-long, highly publicized, international
PETA campaign, McDonald's implements numerous improvements in
the way that animals are raised and
slaughtered.

The PretendersI share PETA's view,” Chrissie told reporters from
Rolling Stone, People, Us and In Style. “It's
better to go too far than not far enough.” Attendees signed a
petition later delivered to Vogue editor Anna Wintour,
asking her to shed fur from the magazine's pages.

A
week later, Sandra Bernhard, Todd Oldham, and The “Lady” Bunny
hosted a PETA bash at SPA, New York's most popular nightclub.
Montel Williams, New York Post gossip columnist Cindy
Adams, and CNN's Jeanne Moos were among those on hand to
applaud Bunny's leap from a giant “cake” and Sandra Bernhard's
rendition of her anti-fashion anthem,
“Undressed.”

RESCUED- Few animals used in circuses ever
experience real retirement. They are hauled from town to
town, forced to perform distressing and even painful
acts, and in the “off season” invariably kept in tiny,
barren enclosures, often denied proper shelter from rain
and snow.

PETA rescued this bear from a traveling
animal act. She now lives in a spacious habitat with
fresh water, nutritious food, and the company of other
bears.